Shaun King Compared Chicago Monsters To George Zimmermann

Shaun King is a one-track audio tape playing on a loop. That loop is “white people are bad, black people are wonderful.” It plays no matter what is going on in the world–even when four black monsters kidnap and torture a white disabled boy and stream it live on Facebook.

Listen, we get it. King thinks white people are bad, 365 days a year. According to him, there are no good white people. And there are no truly awful black people, because no matter what awful thing they might do, they’re being oppressed for it.

King wrote “thousands of white folk online” asked him why he’s not speaking out about the latest atrocity. I suppose he does owe the country some kind of statement, given that–regardless of whether he just returned from some foreign vacation with his family–if the situation was four white kids torturing a black disabled boy, he would find a way to file a story from Zimbabwe or the Kalahari Desert.

This country does not need me to speak out on crimes committed by black folk because nobody in this country is held more responsible for the crimes they commit, and even the crimes they don’t commit, than black folk in America. Right now, young black men in America are incarcerated at a rate higher than South Africans were at the height of Apartheid.

I speak out on injustice. What happened to this man in Chicago was terrible. It was criminal. I hate it, but guess what — justice was swift. It was miraculously swift.

What a hateful jackass. A dangerously hateful jackass who can’t conceive of anything bad enough that black people would do to trigger his condemnation.

He compared those four kids to George Zimmermann, who killed a black teen in self-defense, was arrested, tried, and found not guilty. He wrote “Justice is always swift when black folk mess up.”

Mess up?

Those four little monsters messed up, I guess. Like when my six-year-old takes a chocolate bar from the fridge without asking. They committed a hate crime, on purpose, for their own amusement. I suppose Micah Johnson messed up too.

Justice is based on facts. Malice is one of those determining factors in any criminal case. Police officers, by the nature of their job, are subject to a different standard in applying lethal force on duty. And here’s King comparing officers who in fact mess up with black people who target white people on purpose, with malice.

When white people like Dylann Roof commit heinous crimes, white writers like me call for him to be executed. I don’t write that Roof messed up because I’m upset that South Carolina was forced to remove the Stars & Bars from its statehouse grounds (I’m not upset). Justice is done, because Roof acted with malice.

For King to say that the country does not need him to speak out on crimes committed by black folk because “nobody in this country is held more responsible for the crimes they commit, and even the crimes they don’t commit, than black folk in America,” is dangerous hateful rhetoric.

If King refuses to speak out when “black folk” target a white disabled boy for torture and laugh about it online, perhaps he should seek psychological help. His refusal isn’t just an agenda, or issue advocacy anymore. It’s hate.

About the author

Steve Berman

The old Steve cared about money, prestige, and power. Then Christ found me. All at once things changed. But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

I spent 30 years in business. Now I write and edit. But mostly I love. I have a wife and 2 kids and a dog and we live in a little house in central Georgia.